Abstract
The thermal conductivity of a-Si: H thin films is determined in the temperature range 80–400 K in order to test recent theoretical calculations of heat transport in disordered harmonic solids. The hydrogen content of the a-Si:H films was varied from 1 to 20% using reactive magnetron sputtering and the data show little variation with hydrogen content. The low void fraction of these sputtered films and the phonon scattering provided by the film/substrate interface facilitate a quantitative comparison between experiment and theory. A simple extension of the theoretical calculation to include heat transport by long-wavelength phonons results in impressive agreement between experiment and theory.